Is the Religious Right coming around on same-sex marriage?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As Mother Jones is reporting, the theocratic, evangelical right may finally be realizing that it is losing its battle against marriage equality. As Jim Daly, president of James Dobson's Focus on the Family puts it:

We're winning the younger generation on abortion, at least in theory. What about same-sex marriage? We're losing on that one, especially among the 20- and 30-somethings: 65 to 70 percent of them favor same-sex marriage. I don't know if that's going to change with a little more age -- demographers would say probably not. We've probably lost that. I don't want to be extremist here, but I think we need to start calculating where we are in the culture.

They're not winning on abortion and they're certainly not winning on same-sex marriage.

Now, Daly certainly doesn't speak for the entirety of his movement, but "it can't help the anti-gay religious right to have such a prominent social conservative say that the crusade against gay marriage has essentially been lost and that it's time to accept that reality and move on." 

The Religious Right isn't coming around on same-sex marriage, certainly not, and I suspect that Daly won't find much agreement among his fellow Christianists. Still, it's somewhat encouraging that reality -- if not yet freedom, equality, and justice -- is breaking through into the darkness.